On the occurrence of progressive -sa- in Northern Sotho verbs of state

Abstract

It is shown in this contribution that the real function of the so-called ‘progressive’ -sa- in Northern Sotho is not to mark progressivity, but to distinguish actions and processes of limited duration (e.g. o-sa-ngwala ‘she is still writing’) from those expressed by the ordinary present tense and which do not encode the notion of an endpoint (e.g. o-a-ngwala ‘she is writing’). This explains why -sa- may occur in verbs of state such as go-sa-ômilê (it is still dry) where a point of termination of the state of being dry can be conceived, whereas it is not tolerated in state verbs such as *e-sa-hwilê (?it is still dead) due to the irreversible, and hence non-terminative nature of states such as being dead. With regard to state verbs, it is furthermore shown that they exhibit a dual aspectual character in as far as they contain features of both imperfectivity and perfectivity in their meaning. It is argued that, contrary to existing beliefs, their imperfective aspectual features take precedence over their perfective characteristics, which explains why a morpheme such as -sa- which is aspectually imperfective can occur in verbs of state such as go-sa-ômilê (it is still dry), ba-sa-rôbêtše (they are still asleep), etc. which exhibit past tense morphology.